No instruments have greater dramatic possibilities than the bowed strings. Violinist Jason Kao Hwang knows this well, and he exploits it: Everything from the compositions to the Edge quartet’s lineup on Stories Before Within is designed to maximize the drama within every performance. It works the album is as taut and thrilling as a Hitchcock film.

Crucially, Hwang is not Edge’s only arco player; bassist Ken Filiano brandishes the bow sporadically on each of Stories' five tracks. Actually, though cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum is Hwang’s frontline partner, Filiano is arguably the more important player. This is partly because of the instruments' relationship, their collision of upper and lower registers full of tension, but also because Filiano and Hwang are simply the most creative musicians in the band. In the opening "Cloud Call," violin and bass weave oppositional, rhythmically complex melodies, and Bynum (together with Andrew Drury’s ride cymbal) ends up keeping the pulse behind them.

But Bynum shouldn't be discounted. He sounds terrific, particularly his muted work on "Walking Pictures"; in one of the disc’s most suspenseful moments, Hwang climbs to a high drone (Filiano accenting him an octave below) out of which slowly emerges the cornet, playing an atmospheric melody filled with space and changing moods that the string players both follow in wandering pizzicato. Drury, too, is vital. Bearing most of the rhythm section's weight, he nonetheless manages to be adventurous, inserting bright polyphonic splashes on "Walking Pictures" and spidery cymbal fills on "Embers."

Yet Hwang retains the helm, always ready with cliff-hanging tendrils of sound. His command, however, owes as much to composing as to playing. "From East Sixth Street" is a mélange of several different 4/4 grooves, superimposed on top of each other such that there are rhythmic surprises every few bars. "Third Sight," the multipart centerpiece of the album, is Asian American jazz, but could just as easily be rock, funk, or Jewish-roots music like that of John Zorn. More impressive, Hwang gives the piece a theatrical structure that is both jarring and completely logical and unified. Each musician even gets a meaty solo.

On Stories Before Within, musicians, compositions, and everything else intersect in extraordinary synergy. It's a rare occurrence, and even rarer in music as exploratory as Jason Kao Hwang's. The violinist blends the boldness of Downtown cutting-edge and the finesse and, yes, drama of classical string quartets into riveting, 21st-century jazz par excellence.

]]>morrice.blackwell@gmail.com (Michael J. West)Progressive - CD ReviewsTue, 08 Jan 2008 06:00:00 -0600Mysteries of the Revolution by Mystereis of the Revolutionhttp://jazzreview.com/cd-reviews/fusion-cd-reviews/
http://jazzreview.com/cd-reviews/fusion-cd-reviews/Mysteries of the Revolution has many moments that could serve as entry points to a good album: moments of untapped potential. But the eponymous trio obviously attemp…

Mysteries of the Revolution has many moments that could serve as entry points to a good album: moments of untapped potential. But the eponymous trio obviously attempting to follow the fusion trajectory of Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and ‘70s psychedelic/progressive rock have confused the era’s quality product with its excesses; their debut is full of the latter and terribly short on the former.

Keyboardist Dan Biro is the dominant force in MotR’s music, packing it with layer upon layer of synthetic voicings: piano, Moog, at least two kinds of electric piano and four kinds of organ, white-noise, and guitar so obviously synthesized that he shouldn’t have bothered to emulate an organic instrument at all. Taken together they are an immediate red flag, ambition at its most overweening. Indeed, the orchestration is impressive in its vast scope, but it’s simply too thick: the voicings get so thoroughly lost in each other that it’s impossible to tell what any one of them is trying to accomplish.

Drummer BB Davis, who occasionally doubles on flute, does penetrate the muck. He’s got a stomping rhythm that’s not very creative, but is certainly penetrating. The real casualty of this monster is bassist Mark Smith, who occasionally seems to be doing terrific funk-inspired work when he’s audible.

Yet the cumulative effect of Biro’s layers might forgive the loss of their individual sounds if only the compositions they adorned were as ambitious as the orchestrations. As it stands, Mysteries comprises eleven half-constructed riffs. Some are interesting at first listen, but repeated ad nauseam until they’re simply obnoxious ("Storius Sensorius"), others are very nearly new-age techno in their mindlessness "Nico." Indeed, when Davis does brandish his flute, his ideas often sound so mechanical and insubstantial that they do sound like loops from a techno production (as on "Big Buddah").

"The Crunch," Mysteries’ second track, tells the whole story of the album succinctly (if ten minutes-plus can be called succinct). It opens with a stock "dark" organ vamp, reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, then dives wantonly into a riff stolen from Frank Zappa’s "King Kong," but without Zappa’s careful architecture. It’s simply a broken-up descending figure, played three times, each time resolving into a different chord. After some aimless noodling, the riff recapitulates and the track shifts gears into a slow, bass-heavy psychedelic groove. The organ continues to dominate, running through the playbook of psychedelia’s clichés: long drones, minor-key "surprises," bluesy phrases. Smith then appears with a promising, exploratory bass solo that’s quickly devoured by another round of Biro’s self-satisfied predictability. When the "King Kong" riff returns, it melds into the mud of other keyboard workouts, determined not to be comprehensible.

Alas. Mysteries of the Revolution do seem to have potential in their music and their ideas, if only they can gain a sense of taste and discipline. Their self-titled debut shows that the jazz/prog-rock fusion devotees don’t even have a problem separating the wheat from the chaff, they’re just not sure which is which.